Review by Guy Clapperton
Stars Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtney | Written by Louis Marx
UK certification PG | UK RRP £24.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 200 minutes | Directed by Paul Bernard
The thing about getting older is that the stuff you liked as a kid starts to look very dated indeed. So it is with the original cut of Day of the Daleks; it still takes me back to being seven years old and loving every second of it, but I can see it’s slow, the Dalek voices are just awful and the climactic battle scene is obviously hampered by having only three Dalek props available.
The guys behind the release at 2Entertain agree, which is why there’s a newly-cut version on the DVD and this is the one to watch. Voices replaced by current Dalek supremo Nick Briggs, a new CGI sky-scape for the scenes set in the future, better exterminations and ray guns and above all a re-cut battle scene with a couple of new bits thrown in.
Admittedly bits of it jar. The new exterior for the future leads you to expect a load more from the interiors, which are as studio bound as the stories from the seventies ever were. Familiarity with the original (also on the two-disk set) meant I kept getting distracted looking for changes rather than following the story. And the incidental music is one of the dullest pieces Dudley Simpson ever put together. I imagine he was aiming for “bleak” in the scenes from the future. I could have done with “threatening” instead.
The plot itself is a corker. Pertwee is on fine form as are the rest of the regulars in a tale of time folding in on itself while the world is in turmoil, although typically of that era a lot of the “world in turmoil” scenes consist of a load of people sitting in a room explaining it rather than showing it. The direction’s a bit limp and some of the cast are obviously struggling to make it remotely credible. But the idea remains fresh and the show eminently watchable. It still has the irresistible frisson of being my first television encounter with the Daleks that I remember – but in future I’ll be watching the new version rather than the original cut.
EXTRAS ★★★★★ Text Wow. This time they’re spoiling us. The obvious extra is the revamped version of the show as I’ve already discussed, but there’s a load more. Blasting the Past is a documentary on the making of the original, and must surely be one of the last to include the late Barry Letts, who was producer at the time. His dissection of the bits of the direction that went wrong is almost surgically precise; the director letting the main villain get away with a theatrical rather than televisual performance and seeming stilted as a result, the “point and shoot” rather than “cut this so it looks like more than three Daleks” approach that undermined the final scenes. IHe’s frank, insightful and very incisive. A View From The Gallery involves him and one of the studio technicians going back to TV Centre and doesn’t add much to the proceedings, there’s a fun piece from Nationwide (the One Show of the day) and Blue Peter as Peter Purves reminisces on his time in the series. Disc 2 has extras pertaining to the special edition. The “Making of” is superb; the people remaking it were trying to recapture their excitement from watching the original and to a very real extent they get there. They filmed new bits, re-cut old. There’s a look at the locations as they are now. There’s part 2 of a look at the UNIT family, looking much more poignant in the light of the death of Nicholas Courtney, a piece on the screw-ups over dating the stories and a piece in which a psychologist tries to explain why the original seemed so exciting at the time but doesn’t deliver as well right now. She kind of concludes that it’s because we’re not seven any more – I could have worked that out for myself. It’s cracking stuff and added to the commentaries it’s arguably the extras rather than the story itself that are most watchable on this release.